Santorum Vows to Wage a Long, Fierce Battle

After earlier appearances in Michigan, Rick Santorum met supporters in Hixson, Tenn.Credit
Josh Anderson for The New York Times

TROY, Mich. — Rick Santorum said on Saturday that the race for the Republican presidential nomination is “going to go a long time,” and he vowed that he would “fight fire with fire” against attacks from his chief rival, Mitt Romney.

Mr. Santorum, who is running close to even in the polls with Mr. Romney here on Mr. Romney’s home turf, repeated his accusation that Mr. Romney and Representative Ron Paul colluded against him.

On Saturday, both Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney made appeals to conservatives who were here for a gathering of the group Americans for Prosperity.

Mr. Santorum, who was received with booming applause, lit into Mr. Romney, calling him a politically pliable elitist whose Massachusetts health care plan and selective support for bailouts — for Wall Street’s, against the auto industry’s — disqualified him to be the party’s standard-bearer against President Obama.

“What you have with me is ‘what you see is what you get,’ ” Mr. Santorum said, “as opposed to ‘what you see today may be something different than what you get tomorrow.’ ”

Michigan and Arizona both hold primaries on Tuesday and regardless of the outcome, Mr. Santorum, like Mr. Romney, is preparing to fight on for weeks or months, enticed by new party rules that award delegates in early primaries and caucuses based on each candidate’s share of the votes.

At the same event, Mr. Romney answered with sharp criticism of Mr. Santorum’s support for earmarks and for former Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a defender of abortion rights, and his statement at Wednesday’s debate that at times he had to “take one for the team” by voting, out of party loyalty, for provisions he did not agree with.

“This taking one for the team, that’s business as usual in Washington,” Mr. Romney said. “We have to have principled, conservative leadership, and I have demonstrated that through my life.”

Earlier in the day, during a Tea Party rally in St. Clair Shores, a northern suburb of Detroit, Mr. Santorum said that Mr. Romney and Mr. Paul had tag-teamed him during Wednesday night’s debate in Arizona, and he derisively referred to Mr. Paul as Mr. Romney’s “wingman.”

“The coordination that I felt at that debate the other night was pretty clear,” Mr. Santorum said in response to a question from the audience. “I felt like the messages were being slipped behind my chair.”

He concluded: “We need to go out and say we don’t need the Ron Paul faction and the moderate establishment teaming up to attack the real conservative in this race.”

Immediately after the debate on Wednesday night, Mr. Santorum said he was suspicious that the two may have been colluding. That prompted Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney adviser, to accuse the Santorum campaign of “whiny silliness” and to say that it was flailing in desperation.

The idea that the famously independent Mr. Paul would collude with anyone was absurd, Mr. Stevens said.

“The notion that Ron Paul would do anything but speak his mind is not an argument you can push very far,” Mr. Stevens said. “If ever there was an iconoclast who got up there and said what he believes, it’s Ron Paul.”

Tensions have been rising as the polls for the Republican presidential nomination have narrowed in Michigan in advance of Tuesday’s primary, which is viewed as a make-or-break moment for Mr. Romney. He and Mr. Santorum both have set aggressive schedules across the state in the closing days, and Mr. Paul is campaigning here, too. Newt Gingrich has opted out of Michigan and Arizona, and is instead campaigning on the West Coast. Mr. Santorum appeared Saturday afternoon in Tennessee, which holds its primary on Super Tuesday, March 6.

Mr. Santorum’s frustration spilled out during his speech in St. Clair Shores on Saturday morning. “It’s absolutely laughable for a liberal governor of Massachusetts to suggest that I am not conservative,” he told the crowd of about 150 people. “The man that provided the template for Obamacare, the man who supported the Wall Street bailouts. The man that said that he supported Romneycare. Oh, he wasn’t imposing any morning-after pills on the Catholic Church. ‘Oh, no, I didn’t do that.’ And he repeatedly gets up and says all these things that he didn’t do that he did do.”

Mr. Santorum said, “This is an issue of trust,” and then further mocked Mr. Romney. “He’s had to be what he wants to be. ‘Oh, I’m running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy, so I’ll be a liberal. I’m running for governor of Massachusetts, so I’ll be a moderate. And now I’m going to run for the Republican nomination for president, I’ll be a conservative today.’ What’s he going to be tomorrow?”

Rumors of an alliance between Mr. Romney and Mr. Paul have simmered since it became evident that they were not attacking each other at the debates and that Mr. Paul was aiming his fire at whichever candidate had been threatening Mr. Romney — first Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, then Mr. Gingrich and now Mr. Santorum. A voter at the Tea Party rally raised the question with Mr. Santorum, asking, “What’s going on with Ron Paul and Mitt Romney?” Mr. Santorum clearly had been thinking about the subject.

“I didn’t know they would have picked a president and vice president” before people had voted, he said, referring to another aspect of the rumor — that Mr. Paul was taking up the cudgel in hopes that his son Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, would become Mr. Romney’s running mate. Rand Paul added fuel to the speculation when he told reporters in Kentucky last week that he would be “honored” to be considered.

Marilyn Miars, a retired teacher who listened to Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney speak on Saturday at the forum here, said that she had been drawn to Mr. Santorum’s reputation as an uncompromising conservative. But after listening to Mr. Romney, she said she had doubts about Mr. Santorum. “He seemed authentic until you heard Governor Romney talk about him,” she said. “It causes me to question Senator Santorum.”

Still, for many of the voters at the conference who identified themselves as conservatives, Mr. Santorum holds a deep appeal.

“What he says he believes in, you just know he believes in,” said Tom Foydel, an information technology consultant who favors Mr. Santorum. “That is not what I always think of Mitt Romney.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 26, 2012, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Santorum Vows to Wage A Long, Fierce Battle. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe